The Coffee Break MBA message:
* get ambitious employees reading and learning
* harvest the good ideas through intentional meetings
* identify the ambitious, capable and under-utilized employees through
incentives
makes a lot of sense from the employee side. Opportunity to shine, to
get noticed, and to contribute.
But what about from the C-suite?
It may be that the CEO knows the weaknesses that the company needs to
improve on. Wary of splitting the company's focus, he or she is
continually over-communicating the one big idea that the company needs
to get right (h/t to Verne Harnish and "The Rockefeller Habits").
Reading Jim Collins, Michael Gerber, Lencioni, Christensen - sounds like
a bunch of distractions. Let's say the Harnish model is front and centre
in the executive's mind. Wouldn't it make sense to give everyone in the
company a copy of "Scaling Up" (Harnish's updated book) and get some
synchronization?
No, and I'll tell you why.
1) Monoculture. Get a field full of genetically identical plants, and
one virus can wipe out a crop. In a natural ecosystem, the field will
contain the virus and continue to flourish because of diversity. Don't
be afraid of competing viewpoints - but be able to evaluate them and
discard weaker viewpoints.
2) Simplicity. If you need a whole book to teach the primary concept to
the team, you haven't understood the concept. Narrow down your focus
and teach the Big Idea through everything you do. Frame employee
learning in the context of the Big Idea.
3) Practicality. Using the Big Idea/Great Idea framework (organizing
principle vs. situational pattern), as an executive, you need to focus
on the Big Idea. Your staff need to implement the Big Idea in multiple
situations, so having access to multiple patterns that can be used will
be a positive.
There is nothing stopping you as a manager from over-weighting your
#nextbook selection with books that are in your philosophical camp.
Of course, that means you need to have some familiarity with the
business literature. Feel free to check out #nextbook
for yourself, join
my mailing
list (1 book, 1 tool, 1 idea per week), or just start blocking out
time in your day to read. In the long term, that may be the most
strategic thing you do.
And if it makes sense for the boss, wouldn't it also make
sense for the employee?
Let's turn your company into a Learning Organization. Go ahead, set up
an appointment
for a free consultation.
Categories:
Books
,
Business
,
Methodology
Two-way communication
I'm not just an entrepreneur. I'm also a computer programmer. A
basketball coach. A worship leader at a local church. A one-time Log
Home builder. A computational chemist (in the past). A husband, a
father, a follower of Jesus.
I've got books in my library related to all (well, most) of those roles.
But I don't have the best books, or the most recent books for many of
those fields.
What I do have, is a framework. #nextbook
is a book classification system that sorts readers by role, by their
goal, and by what is overwhelming them. It then assigns a book to each
category. It needs to be expanded to allow for multiple options in each
slot. It needs some cleaning up on the back end. But it could be the
basis for a useful little micro-site for communities focused on a niche.
Here's what is needed to recreate #nextbook for your niche:
1) What are 3-5 roles your members identify with?
2) What are 3-5 goals that your members are aiming towards?
3) What are 3-5 of the top problems that overwhelm your members as they
work towards those goals?
4) A big list of books that are relevant within your community. Get the
title, author, cover image and ISBN for each, and an Amazon or other
purchase link if possible.
5) Break out the categories and link one book to each category.
6) Package all of that up and send it to me, and I'll host it on
northcreek.ca for free.
I have some tools to automate the process, and I'll keep building more
as I get tired of doing the manual stuff. But the bones are there and
available for anyone who wants to work with me.
I have a mailing list that I direct North Creek Book Hub
(entrepreneur-focused) subscribers to. If you have a list, I can send
subscribers your way as well.
I'm open for all kinds of suggestions, even if you have individual book
or category recommendations for me. Send
me what you have!
Thanks,
Dave
PS: Coders, feel free to connect if you have some spare cycles, I'll let
you know what needs to be done - including a perl/shell/unix-y script to
resize book covers and make better reflection images for the 'dock'
animations. Thanks!
Categories:
#nextbook for every niche
Why is it so hard to become a Learning Organization?
1) The company Vision is unclear. If you don't know what you're aiming
for, you'll never hit it.
2) The company has no Processes. If there is no understanding of "How we
do things around here", local fiefdoms and competing departments will
waste your energy in friction and unnecessary complexity.
3) The company has no way of improving its Processes. If "How we do
things around here" never changes, or only changes randomly with no
clear rationale, the company will lose all of its creative people and
become a group of gray salary-drawing bureaucrats.
4) There is no acceptance of new information. If a better idea exists,
the company should be looking for it.
North Creek's Coffee Break MBA is aimed at problems 3 and 4. More than a
Book Club, Coffee Break MBA aims to open up the circulatory system of
your company, invigorating all of your employees and moving management
focus beyond fighting fires to concrete improvements to the bottom line.
Contact me to
set up an initial free consultation.
I would love to talk to you about your Vision, and about SOPs and making
your processes explicit. But there are some great
books and awesome
authors that will help you with that. Let's start with a book club
and see how far we can get.
Categories:
Business
,
Methodology
Why is it so hard?
Think like a tree. The roots and the leaves are where the resources are
gathered. The rest of the structure exists to support leaves and roots.
The trunk is strong, but its purpose is to get the leaves where they
can drink in the sunlight.
1) Push learning to the outermost parts - the leaves - of your org chart.
2) Create listening channels that bring ideas back from the leaves to
the decision-making heart of your company.
3) Align incentives - some incentive for working to find a good idea,
more incentive when a good idea is found.
4) People at the Leaf end need to be looking for Great Ideas - useful
techniques and patterns, and noting Big Ideas as they are encountered.
5) Branches - middle management - need to be integrating Great Ideas
into current processes (explicitly) and passing along Big Ideas.
6) People in the Trunk need to be looking for the next Big Idea that
will disrupt the company and allow it to be reborn as a new, better
company, while incentivizing the branches to find the best Great Ideas
to improve the existing company.
7) Seeds are small, but they carry all the information needed to grow a
new tree. A new Big Idea needs to be launched as a Seed, not as a full
Tree.
(Thanks to Clayton Christensen and The Innovator's Dilemma for
clarifying many of these ideas).
Does this picture match what you want your company to be like? Let's
talk!
Dave
Professional Learner
Categories:
Becoming a Learning Organization
We're a microwave society, and we have been for most of our lives. Why
wait? Use Uber or AirBnB. There's an app that will get it delivered. Put
it in the cloud, don't buy your own infrastructure.
But there are things that take time. Personal growth takes time. Wisdom.
Perspective.
You can speed it up - to a point. Learn to be present. Learn to be
congruent. Learn to be intentional in everything you do.
But some things you just have to work at, practice, do over and over
again. Mastery comes after the apprenticeship.
If you are looking to grow, or looking to help people grow, you need to
set a couple of expectations.
1) It will take a lot of time, where not much seems to be changing.
2) At some point, something will change internally, and the person will
be able to access an entirely new level of achievement, mastery, or
influence. There may be few signs that the change is coming, but when
the prerequisites are there, and the opportunity presents itself, BAM.
There are lots of precedents for this kind of growth. Complexity
research. Supercriticality of liquids. Economic crashes. Sandpiles.
In the pre-Cambrian period, there were very few types of animals
(according to the fossil record). In a geological instant, every major
phyla and body type that we see now, along with many that haven't
survived, suddenly appeared, in what is known as the Cambrian Explosion.
If someone was managing biological diversity, they would have been fired
during the Pre-Cambrian period. But if the growth and development would
have stopped at that point, we wouldn't be here.
If your company is measuring growth linearly, you may be settling for
visible things that can be gamed, but which do not produce real growth.
If you are managing for real growth, you have to have some patience.
You as an individual need to be growing all of the time. It might not be
visible. Don't quit.
You never know when the explosion will occur, and you don't know what
internal things need to change to unleash it.
Never stop growing, even if nobody else sees it.
Your day will come.
Categories:
Business
,
Methodology
Fast Growth vs. Slow Growth
Coffee Break MBA. It has a fatal flaw.
Many of you need a change in your career. You need to grow and try new
things. You need to believe in yourself and see the value that you can
provide.
There are leaders, coaches, and teachers that can help. There are great
ideas that will open up new perspectives for you. There are stories that
will resonate so deeply that you will see the world in a new way.
But they're locked in books.
Maybe you were never a reader. Maybe you digest words for a living, and
the thought of adding to your workload by reading is a special kind of
torture. Maybe you're in the middle of an epic fantasy series and you
have nine more volumes to get through before you will allow yourself to
read anything else.
Well, let's not give up. Let's not hit pause on your career. Let's just
get creative.
1) Audiobooks. First up, get the audio version of the book, listen to it
on your drive, or during your workout.
2) Podcasts. If the author is podcasting, subscribe. Work through their Big
Ideas by listening in 20-30 minute bites.
3) Youtube / TED Online / author's online site. If you want to check out
the author, do a YouTube search and see if they have lectures online. I
was introduced to the "Job-to-be-done" Big Idea through a Clayton
Christensen YouTube video (h/t Ash Maurya). If you are looking for Big
Ideas, you'll probably be able to find a video of the author describing
his or her Big Idea somewhere. Set up a playlist, listen during a
workout (you can probably skip the video outside of a couple of graphics
without missing much).
Now, we need to crowdsource a collection of links. For every book in my #nextbook
collection, there should be at least a great Audiobook edition and a
good set of videos. For many of them, there will be relevant podcasts on
iTunes. If you find good links, email
them to me
or leave a comment here. I'll collect them and add them to #nextbook so we
leave no non-reader behind.
Let's become learners- it's the one thing we can do our whole life.
Dave
Categories:
Books
,
Business
Business Reading without the Reading
Let's start by assuming that your company has at least one problem.
Let's also assume that somewhere, someone has written a business book
describing a solution to your problem.
(Now, it might be a video series, or a seminar, or a podcast, but most
good ideas eventually get turned into books, and Big Ideas that are also
Good tend to become successful because capitalism).
Let's assume that you are the manager, owner, CEO, P&L responsible. If
not, let's pretend you are and you can play along.
How many Big Ideas can you find? Understand? Evaluate?
How many staff do you have that you trust to be able to do the Finding
and Understanding?
How many staff do you have that would love to earn that trust? (See, if
you're playing along, you would love that opportunity, right?)
So cast a wide net in the business learning sphere. Get a bunch of
people to evaluate a bunch of ideas in parallel, then collect the
results, rank them, and then get to implementing the right one, not the
latest one that you have been sold.
Maybe it's out of left field. Maybe it's something that's never been
done in your industry. (Probably that would be a good thing!)
What if you could ask for help, and have your staff volunteer to help
you solve problems? Do the incentives match up? Think about it - you get
innovative ideas investigated and understood by someone within the
company. Your staff get to prove their chops at solving real business
problems.
What if all of this came out of your training budget, and nobody saw
that as misappropriation?
That's North Creek's value proposition. Breadth-first search of the
business literature, by employees and staff, for the benefit of their
career and the company's bottom line.
Calendly
to set up an appointment to talk this over. Follow @northcreeksoft
on Twitter, like NorthCreekSoftware
on Facebook.
Let's turn your company into a Learning Organization.
Cheers,
Dave
Categories:
Business
,
Methodology
Depth-first vs. Breadth-first
Seth Godin, in the Startup
School podcast, said something like that all business non-fiction books
can be read in 5 minutes. I wish that were literally true, as I work
through the stack of books I need to read to stay current with the North
Creek Mailing list (1 Book, 1 Tool, 1 Idea, every Thursday).
But the kernel of the idea is that a good business book is built around
a single Big Idea. Two Big Ideas mean the reader might miss both of
them. So the author, the editor and the publisher make sure the stories,
the data, the frameworks - the whole book supports one Big Idea.
As a businessperson, finding the Big Idea in the book shouldn't be hard.
The reason the book is 250 pages instead of 250 words is that the Bid
Idea needs to be (a) sold to the reader, and (b) translated for the
reader.
You can save a lot of time and skip the sales section if you grant the
thesis, the Big Idea of the book. Let's figure out how to apply the book
to me! But if you are unfamiliar with the Big Idea, you may need to go
through the process of being sold, so that you can answer the objections
others will put in front of you when you start to sell them on the Big
Idea.
If you are not in a senior management role, the Big Idea may not be that
much use to you. Without the authority to make changes, implementing the
Big Idea might be out of your reach. Is it a waste of time to read the
book?
No!
Once you understand the Big Idea, the sales process, and the translation
process, you can filter that out and look for the Great Ideas the author
has included in the book. Great Ideas are practical techniques or
approaches that are used by the author to support his or her Big Idea.
They are not Big enough to support a whole book, or broad enough to
build a whole company around, but they can bring huge advantages to
situations where they are relevant.
A Great Idea is not universal. It may not be helpful at all in your
circumstances. But having that Idea in your mental toolbox may come in
handy when a new situation arises.
Great Ideas are often illustrated in stories or case studies. Since they
are situationally relevant, they are easier to communicate within a
sample situation. Whenever the author tells a story, look for the Great
Idea that is being explained or supported.
Sometimes Great Ideas are frameworks, visual tools, or ways of thinking
about a problem. Whenever there is an illustration in a book, it's a
clue that there is a Great Idea there. Many analysts love to combine two
adjectives, make a grid, and create 4 quadrants. It is immediately
apparent that you want to go up and to the right. That grid may be
describing a Great Idea.
Great Ideas don't require a lot of authority to implement. You can start
trying out a new way of analyzing a problem immediately. You can go to
work, watch a process, and start placing it on a grid within a day.
Companies are usually managed according to a small set of these Great
Ideas, communicated explicitly or implicitly throughout the organization.
As you read a book, keep a notebook handy. Make a page just for the Big
Idea of the book. Note the sales process the author uses to sell you on
the idea. Note the target audience the Big Idea is translated for. After
you've finished the book, see if you can write a paragraph describing
how the Big Idea could be translated for your company.
Then make a whole section of your notebook for the Great Ideas in that
book. Every time you encounter a technique or approach that the author
uses to solve a problem, write it down on a new page. Note the kind of
problem the Idea solves. Draw the picture if there is one, or summarize
the story or case study. Then spend a few minutes translating the Great
Idea to your situation. Don't worry about the whole company (unless you
are the CEO). Instead, apply the Great Idea to your work life, right
now. If there is no immediate application, leave it blank, but make a
note of the problem type. When you encounter that problem type in the
future, your notebook will contain an approach that has worked for other
people in the past.
If you are a manager, imagine if your people were creating and sharing
notebooks full of Big Ideas and Great Ideas. Imagine if there was the
opportunity for people to filter those ideas up to their leaders, so
that the whole company could learn. Great companies coalesce around a
few Big Ideas, but no company can ever have enough Great Ideas in its
toolbox. North Creek Consulting will partner with you to install this
approach into your company. Starting with the classic
business books, your people will be exposed to Big Ideas that will
expand their understanding of the market. They will also start to pick
up Great Ideas that can give your company marginal improvement in lots
of areas at the same time. You're only one person - get more people
reading, learning and growing. Partner with me and let's turn your
company into a Learning Organization.
Excited to keep learning,
Dave
Professional Learner
North
Creek Consulting
Categories:
Books
,
Methodology
Big Ideas and Great Ideas
Coffee Break MBA- it's a bit of a fanciful name, but it expresses the
idea pretty well.
But while it is a long slog for a worker bee, climbing out of the
cubicle 15 minutes at a time, there is a different perspective for
business owners.
Imagine each of your people as an idea vacuum, constantly learning and
adapting to the inputs that come into his or her mind. Imagine adding a
diverse set of Big Ideas and Great Ideas (2 different kinds of awesome!)
to their mental menu. Every person who signs on to learn will grow in
their perspective, in their skill set, and in their productivity.
But what if you intentionally sponsored that growth - and in tens or
hundreds of different directions at once?
For some companies, the CEO goes to a conference, hears a keynote, and
buys a case of books written by that speaker for her 'team'. That one
Great Idea gets transmitted through the organization, and within a few
months, the useful parts are integrated into how the business functions.
Imagine if there were fifty readers, scattered throughout the company.
Imagine if they were paired up, 2 to a book, so that there was some
accountability and encouragement around finishing the book. Within a
month, the company would have 25 Great Ideas or Big Ideas that could
find some application in the company. With some competent management,
those new ideas could be vetted and integrated from the bottom up.
One person can impose a vision on a company. But are you willing to bet
your company on your vision not having any blind spots? Spreading the
search around will expose the company to so many more ideas.
North Creek Consulting is developing a framework for you to turn your
company into a learning organization. http://northcreek.ca/nextbook
is the public face of this framework - a simple site that recommends
books and pairs readers across the internet.
North Creek will spend some time connecting with your management team,
identifying your vision, your goals, what drives your company, and what
your challenges are. I will customize a booklist for you that spans
perspectives, prescriptions, and approaches. I will work with you to
develop a process for learning from your employees. Your staff will be
empowered to change your processes, your priorities, your strategy, and
your bottom line - by learning from the smartest minds in business and
life.
Contact me, Dave Block (dave@northcreek.ca, 780-604-2602) to set up a
free initial consultation. Prepare to build a corporate library, prepare
to invest some time in your employees, prepare to learn.
Turn your company into a learning organization, one coffee break at a
time.
Cheers,
Dave
P.S. Go ahead and call me (780-604-2602), I'll work with you personally
to set this up so it works for your company. If you have a training
budget, buying a whole library costs about the same as sending one
person to one conference!
Categories:
Books
,
Business
,
Methodology
Really, who needs Coffee Break MBA?
Coffee Break MBA is not for everyone.
It's *not* for you if:
* You just want your employees to do their jobs and go home.
* You already have your business figured out for the next 5 years.
* Your employees are incapable of learning.
* Your employees have no ambition and don't want to climb the career
ladder.
* You already know which of your employees has potential and which
should get promoted.
* You've solved your business problems and sleep peacefully every night,
making money without stress.
If this describes you and your company, please *do not* call me
at 780-604-2602 or email me at dave@northcreek.ca.
You will not be interested in distributed
corporate training that will turn your company into a learning
organization from the ground up. You won't want to know what books
you and your staff could be reading to help them where they are, right
now.
Actually, if that describes you, please call me! I'd love to learn how
you are doing it! (wink)
Happy Victoria Day!
Dave
Categories:
Business
Who needs Coffee Break MBA?
At some workplaces, the priority is to get the work done. The ideas have
been thought up, the contracts have been signed, and the people and
equipment are in place. Now turn the crank, get the work done.
Some places are more fluid than that. New ideas are constantly being
introduced by upper management, the market, competitors, new
technologies. Staff are given guidelines, but rather than following
instructions as in a fast food franchise, they are adapting to change,
making decisions, and trying to fulfill the company's goals by using
their best judgment.
Which of these two is closer to your workplace?
I'm not smart enough to come in and solve your problems, improve your
processes, and make you more money. But some really smart people have
written about how they have done exactly that, and those great ideas are
just sitting there, in books.
Now, based on Pareto's law, I estimate that you can get roughly 80% of
the value of the great idea out of those books. The last 20% is why the
authors make thousands of dollars an hour consulting. But 80% of a great
idea is still pretty valuable.
What if there were lots of 80% values being added to your company
regularly? What if you used your staff to hunt for great ideas by
giving them all great books to read?
If you sponsor a "Coffee
Break MBA" program at your company, great ideas will filter into
your staff. You will be able to identify people who can grasp new ideas
and translate them into improvements for your company. This makes the
program a great management recruitment tool.
Your company is going to be investing in your employees, making it more
attractive to job-seekers, and improving your retention.
New ideas coming in will solve some of the problems your company faces.
Given permission to learn and apply those ideas at your company, some
employee is going to introduce something that will make a huge
difference in your bottom line. It might take 6 months, but I guarantee
that you will see a difference.
I want to help you see that happen in your business.
I will help you set up a corporate training program. It will not be
based on my ideas, but on the Great Books of Business. I will help with
the infrastructure, matching employees with books, setting up reading
partners, and working with managers to integrate new ideas into their
processes (again, using ideas from Great Business Books).
Pricing will depend on the size of the business, but will be very
reasonable.
Example Setup:
50 Staff
50 Kindle app downloads
(free)
50 Business books purchased (half Kindle downloads, half
hardcovers for the corporate library): $1500
Ongoing Business Library Purchase
budget: $500/month for 3 additional months, then ~$200/month to
supplement library.
20 minutes sponsored reading time
after lunch daily, for everyone in the company.
1 30 minute meeting every 2 weeks, by
team, to discuss and share the ideas from the reading time.
North Creek Consulting: $2000 for the
first month, $500/month for 3 months to help establish processes, then
$50/month for #nextbook
subscription (curated reading lists with new books and classics,
tailored for your business, by role, goal, challenge).
Total Investment (first 4 months): $6500
Ongoing Investment (monthly): $250
You retain: Corporate Learning Library, Learning Processes, Empowered
Staff, #nextbook subscription
This is just a sample. Contact me (dave@northcreek.ca,
780-604-2602) for a detailed quote based on your situation.
Let's not leave the accumulated wisdom of the last 100 years behind -
let's turn your company into a learning organization!
Dave
North Creek
P.S. Your competitor is probably going to ignore all those great ideas
in the bookstore. Why not increase your advantage by learning faster
than them? Call me (780-604-2602) or email
me now, before they do!
Categories:
Books
,
Business
Business-wide Learning from the Great Books
What is a Coffee Break MBA?
Lots of people work 9 to 5, then come home and parent. When things
finally settle down, about 9 or so, they take out their iPad and look at
the apps. They have a business book they should read, they're on page
22, it will be good for them. And they have Netflix.
50 minutes later, they've enjoyed an episode of a show they just
discovered, and their brains are settled down enough that they can think
about sleep.
It might be two books on the nightstand, and George R. R. Martin wins
over Warren Buffett.
We know we need to fill our minds with positive, encouraging brain food
that will help us at work. But honestly, at 9 pm, we're done. And at
5:30 the next morning, we are just getting through the routine, hoping
to be awake by the time our butt hits the chair at work.
So here's my proposal:
Start a new habit. During your daily coffee break, when you're awake,
but not completely in the zone cranking productively, take out your
business book. Be obvious about it.
Now wait for your co-workers. Someone will ask about what you're doing.
Here comes the tricky part.
Describe the reason you're reading that book. What's the big idea you're
trying to learn from the author?
Now, if you stick to this, you'll finish your book (in fact, you'll
probably get into the book enough that it will be okay to read it at
night or on the weekend). Then you'll bring another good book to work.
After a few conversations, set up a coffee break book club. Just read
for 15 minutes during your break, and then every week, take one coffee
break to have one person share with the group what they have been
learning.
If there's four of you, that means you have to finish a book and talk
about it once every four weeks.
If one of the group is a manager, expand the meeting to 30 minutes, and
bill it to the company training budget. Have the manager get an approved
reading list (suggestions
right here).
If you do this with four co-workers, and you read 12 books each, you
will have assimilated 48 big ideas within a year.
There are lots of lists of suggested books. We just need to figure out
how to get into them enough so that they don't feel like a chore. We
need to create the habit.
Please try this. Let me know how long it takes to get your first
conversation with a co-worker. I'd love to hear a manager's take on
this idea.
More to come on this idea - email me
if you want to keep up as I explore this idea.
Cheers!
Dave Block
Professional Learner
Categories:
Books
,
Business
Coffee Break MBA